I thought this was a great read, I'd never heard of the author before but had seen it included in a horror listmania on Amazon which I'd tried other books from and enjoyed.
This edition is an Echo Library edition (www.echo-library.com) and includes the authors introduction, the introduction and chapters themselves, a short poem called grief and endnotes. There is also a page about the echo library itself which are making sought after books available in a mass published format again, it is a slim volume and has a cheap and cheerful appearence, like a facsimile edition.
The story itself is written in a great olde style, combining reflection and description brillantly and giving a clue to a time which is long vanished, including its norms and values (when menaced by strange creatures our protagonist doesnt seek to summon the authorities, he simply reaches for his amply stocked gun rack and gives fight, in a literal sense his home IS his castle).
The main body of the book is a discovered and half destroyed journal recounting strange battle, unworldly or other dimensional travels and coming unstuck from time itself but the beginning and finish of the book are accounts of the discovery of the book itself in a strange ruin on a cliff above a big pit.
Comparisons have been made with H. P. Lovecraft, which is perhaps fair, the style of a first person narrative contained in a discovered journal, of spooky unexplained placed bordering another unworldly place, scant explanation for fantastical experience or bewildering creatures are all present. However, the book is very much a story in a number of parts, he first in which the protagonist defends his home from invading pig creatures (which may be a figment of his imagination somehow) could be considered comparable to Matheson or Philip K. Dick, the incidence of the house and protagonist becoming unstuck from time itself are actually like HG Wells and along side the time machine are probably the best time travel narratives I've read.
I'm not surprised that there are such mixed opinions give the different styles and story telling that are included in a single short volume but I felt there was a nice olde "take heart and have no fear" adventure styling all throughout. The ending was a little disappointing and I was ready for a much greater expansion of the tale into something else but I understood how it had to end as it did in order to fit with the discovery of journal and return to that point.
